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Colton - Brooks, North Face of Les Droites

19/11/2011 9:54 am

Tim Blakemore

The weather in the Alps has been stable for what seems like an age now, with high pressure in control. The big north faces have been coming into condition with approaches being easy and quick; perfect conditions to get bigger, commiting routes done. The Chamonix valley is also quiet at the moment, with all but the Montenvers train closed and people away visiting warmer climes. It's a great time to be in the bigger hills.

Tamsin and I decided upon climbing the North face of Les Droites. This huge face lies in the isolated Argentiere basin and is home to many great lines. The original 'classic' route was the Cornuau - Davaille but I'm not sure anyone climbs this nowadays. The established trade route seems to be the Ginat and it gets a lot of traffic. I did it years ago and have vague memories of following bucket steps. The route finding is also very obvious all the way to the breche. We opted to climb the magnetic line of the Colton - Brooks route. This route has always appealed to me as it seems to have a very strong natural line that weaves its way through some impressive architecture.

We approached the traditional way (i.e. the lift's shut) from the Grands Montets station and onto the Argentiere Glacier. I'd never done this and genuinely enjoyed it. I didn't even know there were ladders on the 'summer' approach having always descended by the more normal winter route. It takes about four or five hours before the winter room of the Argentiere Hut is reached. This hut has undergone major restoration and it's much improved. We shared it with the only other people in the entire basin; two dope smoking Finns who had already got the fire going and were really welcoming. They had already decided that they were just going to take the next day off and 'acclimatise' a bit more before getting on the Ginat. This was great news as it meant we would have the face, and more importantly, the descent to ourselves.

We left the hut around 2 am and set out in great conditions. Crisp snow and a bright moon. The face was even sombre at night however as it lay in the moon's shadow and I wondered how long it would be before I'd actually feel the sun that day. Tamsin led off over the bergschrund about an hour and a half later and we settled in to the bottom part of the face. Most of the lines here start up the Messner route and we followed this until the obvious ramp leads left. Here we continued straight up pleasant, icy and sometimes mixed climbing. The key to climbing bigger faces like the Droites is to know when to stretch pitches, cut corners and simul climb. There is loads of opportunity for this on the route but the limiting factor was our lack of acclimatisation. Sometimes we just ran out of steam before running out of runners.

We reached the icefield before dawn however and headed up that towards the upper, key section of the face. I was looking forward to this section as I knew it had the 'meat' of the route on it but also because it followed such a strong line. We traversed in to the crux pitch over some hard grey ice which meant putting a 'proper' pitch in and then set off up the crux smear. I thought it was really pleasant alpine ice climbing and dare I say it easy for the grade which meant I could look around and enjoy the ambience of this great face.

From then on we followed the natural curving ramp/gulley before arriving on the summit's slopes. A quick pitch of mixed climbing led on to the West summit of Les Droites (I've now only got the East to tick as I've bagged the larger Central Summit via the Lagarde Route) where we soaked up the sun for the first time that day. The descent was, as expected dry and loose. It would be a bad place to be with any other parties above you but with care it seemed ok. After only one rope jam we landed on the glacier and started the longish descent over complicated ground/crevasses. A long traverse led us to the Couvercle hut where a French team had left a small light outside to guide us in. At last we relaxed, melted some snow, ate some soup and collapsed for the night.

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